


For Want of a Haircut

by midrashic



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, F/F, Nightmares, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24299023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midrashic/pseuds/midrashic
Summary: After they win, Catra keeps her hair short. Adora’s not sure why.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 47
Kudos: 413





	For Want of a Haircut

Adora takes a deep and abiding joy in introducing Catra to all the pleasures of life beyond the Horde, the same way, she thinks, Bow and Glimmer once did with her. The difference is that she _knows,_ unlike Bow and Glimmer, exactly what Catra expects, and the satisfaction that thrums through her when Catra takes a bite of her first cake and says, “Oh my _God,_ I can’t believe I was fighting to keep this from people for _years_ ,” is both expected and greater than she could’ve ever imagined.

Spa treatments are one of these things. Adora watches, enthralled, as Catra, at first cagey with strangers touching her, slowly melts into the hands of one of Bright Moon’s designated spa technicians. He runs a careful hand through the short fur on Catra’s back, and then sinks a hand into her mane, and Catra makes a noise that she’d previously only ever made when she’d beaten Adora at a game or Adora had been kissing her silly for a good fifteen minutes. “I have a friend,” the technician says, his broad shoulders excellent for massaging tension out of warriors’ muscles. “Hairdresser. She could neaten up those ends, you know.”

It’s not a bad idea; universal dictators aren’t the best with style. But Catra’s fur stands on end again like he’s mortally offended her, and she hisses; though she’s reduced soon enough to purring incoherence when he hastily starts back up on her shoulder massage again.

Adora puts it out of her mind for a while. They aren’t so much _resting_ after the Great Battle that finally ended Horde Prime’s reign of terror so much as _recovering_ , and there is always more to do. Succession issues to sort out, now that neither King Micah nor Glimmer are dead or missing in action. Teaching Hordak about the ways that people live _with_ each other, not in a strict hierarchy where he’s at the top. Catra, in a move that surprises everyone but probably most of all Catra and Hordak themselves, takes it upon herself to teach him appropriate times to rage (like: not at dinner) and basic breathing techniques to control himself. And it turns out that turning Etheria into the lush, green-filled paradise it once was before the interference of the First Ones causes… some problems. Minor problems! But Bright Moon, for example, was almost entirely overgrown with flowers and vines, and Adora swings her holographic sword through the hallways as Perfume coaxes back the plants into something resembling order, and together they all make the old places livable again.

They’re on one of their first missions to bring magic back to the universe when Adora notices it again. Catra is tugging at her mane with one of her claws, wincing as she tries to get a tangle out. “Let me help,” she says, and Catra bares her teeth but lets Adora sit behind her with a hairbrush and gently, gently, stroke out the fine hairs of Catra’s mane. “Why don’t you let me cut it?” she asks. Catra scoffs.

“You only know how to do one thing with hair, and I wouldn’t look good with that little pouf,” Catra says. “I’ll get it trimmed up when we head home.”

 _Home._ It still makes Adora feel like a fizzy drink, shaken up, placid on the outside but vibrating with bubbles on the inside, to hear Catra call Bright Moon _home._ Sure, maybe she’s referring to Etheria in general—this is a distinction that they have to make, nowadays—but she knows that Catra is picturing the same thing she is, their bedrooms next to each other off the great hall of the palace, the window hangings, the cushions, the crudely drawn picture of a princess with scratched-out eyes that Catra put up as a joke and for target practice. The same spa technician, the same friends, the same _family_ —and maybe not the same hairdresser, but so what if Adora likes to cut her hair herself because she doesn’t trust anyone else with her signature style? It suits her, even her She-Ra form agrees now.

She doesn’t get it trimmed up when they get home, though. She lets it grow, ragged, and at first Adora thinks she’s just growing her mane back out, but eventually Catra wakes up from a screaming nightmare and stalks through the halls and bangs on the royal hairdresser’s door in the middle of the night until she wakes and then growls her into cutting her mane short again. “Catra,” she says the next day after hearing the whole story, and stops, because she’s not sure quite what to do. “Catra,” she says again.

“I was avoiding it because it reminded me,” Catra says without looking at her. They’re at the fish pond on the edge of the palace grounds, and Catra’s toes are just dipped in the water. She’s watching the fish swirl gently in the pond, not even trying to catch one. “He cut my hair before he… before I… before the chip.” She snorts. “At least he didn’t give me one of those flat mohawk things all the clones were wearing. Not even Hordak pulls that off.”

“Catra,” Adora says, her voice rising and falling into something plaintive.

Catra shrugs. “I got it done,” she says. Her hair isn’t quite the same length as Horde Prime had left it, a little shorter on the sides, and bangs fall into her eyes now. It’s very… Catra. “I didn’t want… I didn’t want him to have that. My hair.” Adora sits down next to her and runs her hand through Catra’s mane. Catra’s always been vain about her thick, beautiful mane, and it hurts to see that she doesn’t feel like she can grow it back out without feeling like she’s _surrendering_ something to Horde Prime. But Adora is there for her, whatever she looks like, whatever shape she takes over the years, and Catra tips her head back into Adora’s long-fingered touch, and sighs with pure contentment. Later, Glimmer and Bow find them, hand in hand, and Glimmer flops down into the grass and complains about her Dad’s idea of bonding activities all being from when she was a toddler, and Bow braids _Adora’s_ hair, and none of them mention Catra’s new haircut, and all is well, eventually.

Catra keeps getting it cut. Even after her nightmares die down, even after they’re all grown. Some of it is practicality; Bow had sobbed when he’d had to cut the braid he’d grown out after an excursion to another planet devoid of magic had discharged some… _gunk_ into his lustrous hair. Still, Adora thinks sometimes of… that dream. Just a dream. Horde Prime made sure she knew that. Just a dream, as much a dream as the vision she shared with Mara, who she will never know except through hologram and secondhand stories from Razz. That dream grows closer and closer, as Glimmer grows into her Queenhood and Bow gets _tall,_ and. And it’s silly to get hung up over things like the length of Catra’s hair. But Adora quietly, secretly, grows her own hair out, and never tells anyone why, and at Scorpia’s first ball, everything is perfect, down to the glittering princess diadem Glimmer presents her with the week before, to match Glimmer’s own, in the shape of She-Ra’s headdress instead of a rune stone. Except for Catra’s mane, which still bears the marks of what Horde Prime did to her.

After the dancing, Catra traipses over to her and runs a gentle nail over the planes of Adora’s face. “I know that scowl,” she says. “But no one’s crashing the party this time. See? I have an invitation and everything.” Adora cracks a smile; Catra always knows how to get a smile from her. Catra sighs and flops into a chair beside her. “What’s up?” she says. “I can’t have fun while you’re over here moping like a mope-machine.” They ran into mope-machines on their last mission. It wasn’t a fun time.

“It’s nothing,” Adora says, but she’s always been a bad liar and Catra’s always been able to see through her besides. 

Catra rolls her eyes. “Try again,” she says, playfully, but with a hint of steel behind it. Adora smiles ruefully.

“All right. I was just thinking about… this,” she says, and reaches out and wends a finger in Catra’s mane. Catra blinks at her.

“My hair?” she says doubtfully. “You were thinking about my hair?”

“I guess I’m just… sad that you still. That you still feel like you need to cut it so that Horde Prime doesn’t have that hold on you. It’s… it’s been years, Catra, and…”

But Catra is laughing, so hard she’s been stunned into silence, tears of mirth sparkling from her eyes. She wipes one away, delicately. “You still think—oh jeez—you think this is because of _Horde Prime?_ ”

“Yes,” Adora says hesitantly. “That’s what you said—”

“That’s what I said _years_ ago! You—that’s really what you’ve been thinking every time I’ve gotten a haircut for the last _several years_? No wonder you make such a stink-face whenever I get it cut.”

“I do not make stink-faces,” Adora says with much dignity. “I am She-Ra, Princess of Etheria, and I do not—”

Catra slicks her mane back to make an Adora-pouf and does such a vicious and exacting impression of Adora’s stink-face that they both descend into laughter. “Adora,” she says gently, when they’ve recovered a bit, “it’s not about that. It hasn’t been about that for _years_. I just like it shorter, okay?”

“But…” Adora says, “you never liked it short when we were kids.”

Catra smiles a little awkwardly. “Well… this is what I looked like when… when you forgave me. When you came back for me. I like looking in the mirror and… and seeing that I’m not the same person who did all those things, who tried to hurt you. And I like… I like that you have that reminder. That you can never forget which Catra is in bed beside you."

“Oh, Catra,” Adora sighs, and leans in and kisses her. It’s a very good kiss.

Adora runs her fingers through Catra’s short mane and tips their foreheads together. She feels a little silly now that she didn’t just _ask_ Catra sooner—that she waited, for some reason, for this moment—that her mind when she was a teenager though that for Catra to be healed she would have to look the same, almost, as she always had. “I could never forget which Catra is in bed beside me,” she says. “But if you like it, I guess I can get used to it, too.”

Catra grins, a dangerous, wicked grin. “Good,” she says, and pulls Adora to her feet. “Now, I believe that you owe me at _least_ one dance from when you were moping over here.”

Adora smiles. “Is that how it works.”

“Yes,” Catra decides, and pulls her onto the dancefloor, and they dance, and—for a while, at least—all is well.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, I really banged this out in an hour after finishing the final season, huh. Find me at [tumblr](https://midrashic.tumblr.com). If you like my work and want to support me, buy me a coffee.


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